Educationally inclined microcomputer maker Raspberry Pi today revealed that its ARM-based credit card-sized machine is to be taken to coders worldwide by two big-name suppliers.
Lining up to offer the tiny machine come RS Components, part of London Stock Exchange-listed Electrocomponents Plc, and Premier Farnell's Element 14, …

Re: The eBayers can go hang

Re: One per customer

Why didn't they organise similar restrictions to what eBay do with charity event tickets and major launches like iPhone/PS3- more stringent requirements on the seller, safer *cough* payments by PayPal only, restrictions on the number you can sell, must donate 20% to the charity?

Every cloud...

RS and Farnell may be embarrassed that their servers collapsed under the load but I bet that RS has doubled the size of its mailing list and Farnell may also do so once their login page starts responding again.

I'm trying to login to fr.farnell.com which Netcraft tells me uses Akamai, but "The proxy server did not receive a timely response from the upstream server."

Re: Re: it really is back to the early 80s

Re: Re: it really is back to the early 80s

@ James Hughes

James, we have been expecting this product for a while now. Several deadlines have been missed and information has been sketchy.

When some are actually available for sale those who have parted with their cash have been told they MIGHT expect delivery in what, oh, about SIX WEEKS?

Then we learn via Twitter that they have not arrived from Asia yet and they still need to clear customs. To me this way of dealing with customers stinks of dishonesty.

When we see some pictures of a customer in the UK holding one of these mythical devices, that's when a sensible person will part with their money. Can't show me that picture? Then it is vapourware for now.

Re: Basic

It looks like Farnell are hosting either with Kingston Comms (unlikely) or trying to DIY on a Kingston line - would explain why their site is always so shoddy for responsiveness, wouldn't surprise me if they're trying to get away with a 2Mb SDSL! :D

Re: Re: Double standards

"The real question left hanging from the other thread is if the RaspberryPi is a PC."

No it's not - there is one person on this forum who doesn't seem to understand what a computer is, the rest of the posters seem to at least have a non-negative IQ.

"My take is if you connect it to a TV and don't live alone it's not personal anymore."

Fantastic. Great. Marvellous. I hope you and your 'take' have a happy life together elsewhere. If you believe in yourself, and your point of view, so little that you have to post as an AC - you might want to just not bother next time.

Re: Re: Double standards

go and read a book about the history of computing, and you will get where the title "PC" as in personal Computer comes from...

here a hint,,, its a computer that one user uses at a time, not a time share on a mainframe...

back in the day, Sinclair Sprectum, zx81, BBC A & B, Acorn electron, Commodore vic20 & C64 and the rest of the "home computers" as in you could use it at home, all commandeered the telly, but were all still personal computers...

its nonsense like this, is exactly why we need a product like the RasPi on the market today. Maybe people will learn about exactly what a computer is and what you can do with it, other than troll on forums and knock one out while browsing redtube...

Re: Oh this takes me back

Re: Oh this takes me back

hah, I remember waiting for a Sinclair _calculator_ (kit, no less) to be delivered. £14.99 at 1976-ish prices, what's that today? More than a Raspberry Pi, that's for sure. Wonder if my Mum knows how much I really appreciated that present? Must tell her :)

Managed to get order in with Farnell at 11:48 after many delays, for the £30-ish price quoted above. Expected delivery on 16th April. I'm OK with that. Why? Because it means that the vast number of people who said they were interested, were genuinely interested in buying one.

The whole thing looks like something that came to the table at the 11th hour and thus has more than a slight niff of cock-up about it.

But unfortunately, RasPi acted like a small company just when they needed to become a much bigger one.

Unless Farnell and RS could prove they had the grunt to handle this, they should always have stuck to the plan and put off the big distributors until round 2. My guess is that Raspberry Pi were wowed by the offer from some large distributors (who had only just heard about the project when the news coverage started ramping up) and grabbed the opportunity for fear that wouldn't get a second poke later on.

RP obviously had doubts about their ability to handle the traffic or they wouldn't have handed it over and trusted that a big name supplier = big website capacity.

It's a shame they apparently hadn't consulted anyone who runs web services with significant activity spikes. I'm sure today's meetings will now descend into the usual spasms of paranoia and trips into side-issues while trying to avoid the fact that what you really needed to do was spend a ridiculous amount of money on web infrastructure that can handle the spikes, acknowledge that it will usually lay practically dormant and then be decommissioned for something cheaper when the fuss dies down.

I understand that Farnell and RS are probably in a better position to handle the whole process from manufacturer to delivery, leaving RaspberryPi themselves free of logistics concerns, but it's a shame the initial run couldn't be on sale on places like Amazon who can handle spikes with their hands tied behind their back.

Not that I'm personally affected, thanks to super-fast Internet at work and an existing account at Farnell I got one of the first units as the servers began to crumble, it's just that the experience would be much better.

"Unless Farnell and RS could prove they had the grunt to handle this,"

Is there an established recognized method by which they could have proved they had the grunt? Maybe the foundation could have initiated DDOS attacks on their partners websites ahead of launch just to check.

"...they should always have stuck to the plan and put off the big distributors until round 2.

So they would have sold them, how? Via their own website, which they knew wouldn't handle the traffic?

"...while trying to avoid the fact that what you really needed to do was spend a ridiculous amount of money on web infrastructure that can handle the spikes"

Are you missing the part where the Raspberry Pi foundation is charity run by volunteered who largely self financed their first production run and don't have 'ridiculous amount of money'? Why would RS or Farnell spend 'ridiculous amount of money' just to handle the traffic generated for a few hours by interest in one single product amongst everything they sell?

I'd be interested to know...

What peak Amazon spikes are like - is that the load oover the whole website, or peaks for a specific product? The spike on the Raspi was pretty high, but I am pretty sure Amazon could have coped. Although going with Amazon and the Foundation would have lost money on each sale.

"Is there an established recognized method by which they could have proved they had the grunt?"

Yes. It's called profiling. In this case you might start by producing the specifications used when Farnell/RS procured their web service + any upgrades since. Then you compare them to the expected volume of interest in Raspberry Pi. If it looks likely to meet demand, you do some load testing to make sure. If it fails, you either upgrade and retest or find another host and start again. Do you think no one does this? Do you think, say, Netflix just kept bringing in servers one by one until the site worked?

"Maybe the foundation could have initiated DDOS attacks on their partners websites ahead of launch just to check"

Of course, that's the only conclusion you could come to if you don't know what you're talking about.

"So they would have sold them, how? Via their own website, which they knew wouldn't handle the traffic?"

Introduce multiple release dates? The oversubscription of the first batch was never in doubt, my point is that this part of the project is amateurish. If you can't handle the big hit, all you can do is spread it out.

"Are you missing the part where the Raspberry Pi foundation is charity run by volunteered who largely self financed their first production run and don't have 'ridiculous amount of money'? "

No. Are you aware that everything is given to charities willingly and that the risk of running a charity is that if it can't find the resources it needs, it results in problems?

"Why would RS or Farnell spend 'ridiculous amount of money' just to handle the traffic generated for a few hours by interest in one single product amongst everything they sell?"

Oh, I don't know, how about so they can conduct their business?

Also, I'm sorry your attention was drawn to my habit of being slow to spot spelling mistakes, but if you want to make a feature of it and quote an example twice, you use quote marks. That's why they're called quote marks.

Such is the shit-sucker situation of running a busy web service. Profiling provides you with something better than a guess, then it's up to you how much extra you add on until you feel comfortable with the capacity. All of which costs.

Or you could further mitigate the situation by seeing if someone like Amazon will tell you the kind of throughput they got when a new Harry Potter book was launched and work off that. It's just borrowing someone elses profile. However Amazon are unlikely to respond to you and a consultation firm offering the same kind of info will also charge you lots.

After that you are left with, as I said, trying to spread the load. Multiple release dates are far from ideal but if you only have Hobson's choice available to you then that's your lot.

I love hindsight too, it probably gives us 50% of the reasons to have discussion forums.

"Do you think no one does [profiling]?"

James is presumably trying not to upset RaspI's "business partners", so maybe I'll say it...

Looks like some more people should look into profiling. Or at least into contingency planning.

Farnell were basically off the air till lunchtime.

RS were some way ahead of them, they at least had a static page as their front page early on.

If these outfits want to do life on the cheap by not spending on kit for spikes and not spending on profiling (which may be understandable in their kind of business), they should at least make sure they have a contingency plan.

Re: Cashing In On Ebay

If this lowlife seller is ever caught by the 49-odd honest RasPi-seekers whom (s)he effectively cheated out of a fair punt at buying one (assuming the seller secured them to begin with), the trashing of his/her eBay rating is likely to be the least of the individual's concerns...

Re: Re: Element14

Hmmm - does seem to be a connection with ST according to the "may-or-may-not-be-accurate" Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Computers#Final_restructuring_and_Element_14_Ltd_.281998.E2.80.932000.29